This may sound very silly, but it had not occurred to me that blog posts might count as legitimate entries to this, and if I had realized that I might have tried to submit something. Writing this mostly in case it applies to others too.
It’s sort of weird how “blogpost” and “paper” feel like such different categories, especially when AFAICT, papers tend to be, on average, less convenient and more poorly written blogposts.
The funny thing is that if you look at some old papers, they read a lot more like blog posts than modern papers. One of my favorite examples is the paper where Alan Turing introduced what’s now known as the Turing test, and whose opening paragraph feels pretty playful:
I propose to consider the question, “Can machines think?” This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms “machine” and “think.” The definitions might be framed so as to reflect so far as possible the normal use of the words, but this attitude is dangerous, If the meaning of the words “machine” and “think” are to be found by examining how they are commonly used it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the meaning and the answer to the question, “Can machines think?” is to be sought in a statistical survey such as a Gallup poll. But this is absurd.
The shining light of Ra may be doing useful work if the paper is peer-reviewed. Especially if it made it through the peer review process of a selective journal.
Fair, but a world where we can figure out how to bestow the shining light of Ra on selectively peer reviewed, clearly written blogposts seems even better. :P
The distinction between papers and blog posts is getting weaker these days—e.g. distill.pub is an ML blog with the shining light of Ra that’s intended to be well-written and accessible.
Sweet.
This may sound very silly, but it had not occurred to me that blog posts might count as legitimate entries to this, and if I had realized that I might have tried to submit something. Writing this mostly in case it applies to others too.
It’s sort of weird how “blogpost” and “paper” feel like such different categories, especially when AFAICT, papers tend to be, on average, less convenient and more poorly written blogposts.
The funny thing is that if you look at some old papers, they read a lot more like blog posts than modern papers. One of my favorite examples is the paper where Alan Turing introduced what’s now known as the Turing test, and whose opening paragraph feels pretty playful:
Blog posts don’t have the shining light of Ra around them, of course.
If your blog posts would benefit from being lit with a Ra-coloured tint, we’d be more than happy to build this feature for you.
<adds to list of LessWrong April Fools Day ideas>
The shining light of Ra may be doing useful work if the paper is peer-reviewed. Especially if it made it through the peer review process of a selective journal.
Fair, but a world where we can figure out how to bestow the shining light of Ra on selectively peer reviewed, clearly written blogposts seems even better. :P
The distinction between papers and blog posts is getting weaker these days—e.g. distill.pub is an ML blog with the shining light of Ra that’s intended to be well-written and accessible.
Qiaochu, I’d love to see an entry from you in the current round.